This invention relates to apparatus and methods for producing vocal accompaniment with sound producing musical instruments. The new apparatus and method uses recorded alphabet letter sound recordings of individual consonants and vowels as well as combinations of letter sounds in pitched tonal content to be selected in a sequence or randomly by the electronic signals of a played musical instrument to be output with the sounds of the musical instrument.
Systems, apparatus and methods may be known for use in inputting human voice or musical tone sounds, scaling the voice pitch or adjusting instrument tone sounds and controlling the output of separate sounds with chord and pitch control for rhythm and harmony. The apparatus electronics may emphasize the design for automatically generating types of sounds and combining or mixing of sounds for output. The inventions do not disclose the specifics of a letter tone voice system. Voice pitch producing instruments also do not include the specifics of a letter tone voice system.
Other apparatus may generate audio data automatically for generating polyphonic ringtone sounds. The methods of such apparatus do not control individual letter sound for use with musical instruments. There may also be instruments with various controls for functions and switches to manage input sounds with an additional or second sound for harmony sound combination. These apparatus and methods do not deal specifically with letter tone voice sound and musical instrument combination management.
The combining of a sound generating device with a musical instrument being played may be an old concept in the art of music as for example in the U.S. Pat. No. 1,922,239 of Fuschi. This invention has limited electronic structure such as the use of connecting wires to speakers to output sounds in combination with a piano as disclosed. The primarily mechanical device incorporates metal tone disks with styluses mechanically linked to piano keys and connected to a sound box with wires attached to loud speakers or amplifiers. The metal tone disks incorporate five vowel sounds in a generally rudimentary manner.
There may be available software programs for use with musical devices for creating words and phrases for synthesized singing that may use a computer and a midi keyboard. Other devices may store a sample library of sounds, words and phrases designed for a hardware sampler and a midi keyboard. These types of systems may use synthetic or real singing voices to simulate a singer accompanying a musical instrument that is a string instrument.
It appears there is a need for an apparatus and method that is simple for use by musicians in live performances with all types of musical instruments to control pitched tonal letter sounds to be produced while playing an instrument rather than synthetically created or library assembled singers of phrases and songs that may be complicated background singing not manageable in small increments.